Wired has a very interesting piece on how the Duke Nukem Forever project failed. It’s not only relevant because DNF is part of the nerd culture but also because it is a very interesting tale about a company that could not achieve a reasonable Definition of Done (DoD).
In software development we often talk about Done […]
Archive for the 'management' Category
Duke Nukem Forever and Magic Bags of Money
Published by December 22nd, 2009 in agile, business, case study, digital media, economics, management, thoughtworks and trends. 3 CommentsI Wish I Knew That Before Getting This Job – Slides and (Long) Notes
Published by November 24th, 2009 in agile, business, c#, components, domain driven design, domain specific languages, economics, events, java, layers, management, object orientation, software architecture, software design, thoughtworks and trends. 0 CommentsAs I said here before I was in Brazil some weeks ago to present at a conference. I had a really great time over there with some amazing people and would like to thank Caelum for their hard work in creating such a great conference. I’m making the slide deck and notes available in my […]
3 Things Agile Teams Should Care About
Published by August 17th, 2009 in agile, management, software architecture, software design and thoughtworks. 3 CommentsRegardless of what kind of team you have, it is a given that if you keep the wrong focus you are going to be in some kind of trouble. It is very important for a team to have a clear understanding of the project’s goals and constraints. That sounds like PM-speak but it’s not only […]
Nick showed me this today. My favourite part:
At a workshop once, Pete McBreen said “The Agile methods are methods created by people who like to program.” While that’s not entirely true, we bet it’s more true of that particular bunch of people than of any previous gaggle of methodologists. And their oddity went even further: […]
My Submission for Agile Australia 2009
Published by June 23rd, 2009 in agile, events, management, software design, thoughtworks and trends. 0 CommentsAgile Australia 2009 is close and the deadline for talk proposals ends next week. I’ve submitted one talk proposal:
Where do Acceptance Tests go to die?
Often the first thing a mature agile developer does when picking up a new card from the story wall is to create an automated test to validate its acceptance criteria. After […]
Velocity: Will we Ever Learn?
Published by September 19th, 2008 in agile, business, economics and management. 15 CommentsIt is a fairly common place to have developers telling the business and project managers that the process needs to be improved and the business dismissing the claim saying something in the lines of “Who cares? Our Velocity is ok.”.
The problem is that it is very easy for inexperienced Business Analysts and Project Managers […]
Agile Adoption Patterns – A Review
Published by August 3rd, 2008 in agile, books and management. 2 CommentsAddison-Wesley sent me a copy of Amr Elssamadisy’s new book, Agile Adoption Patterns: A Roadmap to Organizational Success.
The book is, as the title suggests, a catalog of patterns that are generally used in Agile software development adoptions. One characteristic of Amr’s work that called my attention is that he uses Linda Rising’s work as reference […]
Enough of Methodologies, Let’s do Practices!
Published by July 30th, 2008 in agile, business, management and trends. 7 CommentsLast year I was lucky enough to watch Ivar Jacobson presenting his current work on software development processes. This work is summarized in the 3-parts article Ivar published in Dr. Dobbs magazine named “Enough of Processes: Let’s Do Practices”. In the first part, Jacobson describes a series of problems with processes and concludes:
What Do These […]
I was just reading Better Software’s latest edition. In a fantastic article Clinton Keith and Mike Cohn describe guidelines on how to fail an agile project (with style!). Based on earlier posts it is quite obvious that my favourite is #9:
Merrilynn was able to use this guideline to kill her company’s pilot agile project. […]
Another […]
BigPharma Problems & Solutions: Have You Seen This Before?
Published by July 1st, 2008 in agile, business, case study, economics, management and trends. 4 CommentsMay 2008’s edition of Harvard Business Review has an article titled ‘Rebuilding the R&D Engine in BigPharma’. In this article Jean-Pierre Garnier -CEO of GlaxoSmithKline- talks about the changes that BigPharma’s R&D process has to face to stay competitive in the new market.
See if you find anything familiar in these quotes:
The most significant [of the […]
